One thing has shifted, though: teens are being more cautious about contraception when having sex for the first time. Some 85% of males aged 15-19 reported using a condom during their first sexual experience in the four years ending in 2010, a jump of 9 percentage points since the last iteration of the National Survey of Family Growth, conducted in 2002.

More males — 16%, up 6 percentage points — also reported using a condom when they first had sex in addition to a hormonal method of birth control used by the female, the study finds.

The past several surveys have showed a continued decline in sexual activity and a rise in contraceptive use for those teens who are having sex.

In 1988, more than half of teen females and 60% of teen males who had never married reported having had sexual intercourse. Now, those numbers stand at 42.6% for young women and 41.8% for young men. Abstinent teens most frequently cited religious or moral objections to sex as a reason for holding off. The two other top reasons — for both young men and women — were a desire to avoid pregnancy and not having found the right person yet.

Rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections declined throughout the 1990s, as more comprehensive approaches to the prevention of HIV and teen pregnancy were used, says John Santelli, a public health professor at Columbia University. But in the past decade, the public policy has shifted to a focus on abstinence, which is “not a long-term solution for young people,” he tells the Health Blog. (Santelli was not involved in the CDC research.)

The latest survey shows the most commonly-used contraceptive method is condoms, with 96% of young females having reported using that method of birth control. Other common methods were withdrawal, at 57%, and the pill, at 56%.